


tell me we're alright, tell me we're okay

by Kaywinnit



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Watcher Entertainment RPF
Genre: Angst, Demons, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Self-Sacrifice, Supernatural Elements, shit actually happens and shane is too chill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27152134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaywinnit/pseuds/Kaywinnit
Summary: "We know what to do – we have to find a glowing door. We go through it, we go home. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”“The weird, mystical atmosphere with bad poems appearing in your pocket and our being unable to remember jack shit isn’t freaking you out?” Ryan presses disbelievingly.Shane shrugs. “I don’t know, man. There’s nothing I can do about what’s going on, besides press forward. Panicking is only going to make that harder.”
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 11
Kudos: 106





	1. not a soul up ahead and nothing behind

The air smells ashy, like there’s a wildfire nearby – close enough to be worrying, far enough away that the plume of smoke is slightly faded but omnipresent. He squints at the sky, head pounding. It doesn’t look hazy – the sky is blue, with fat, white clouds drifting slowly across it. Tiny rocks are digging into the back of his head, and he feels itchy underneath his clothes.

He sits up, pressing his palm to his right eye, and looks around, blinking. He’s lying on a gravel road, which stretches into the distance over a slight rise. In front of him is a green field, the grass waving gently in the breeze. Far off in the distance, the green field fades to golden, simmering under the overhead sun. If he squints, he thinks he can see someone, like a faded shadow, in the far distance. He has the prickling sense he’s being watched, and low-level anxiety starts to burn in the pit of his stomach.

He hears a groan, and flinches, twisting around so sharply that his spine protests.

Behind him lies the tallest man he can ever remember seeing, spread flat on his back, arms out, palms towards the sky. The guy has brown hair flopping over a very pale face, jean jacket over a plain white t-shirt and red flannel, and jeans with holes in the knees. His eyebrows are drawn together, eyes flickering frantically under his eyelids.

Unsure what to do, he reaches towards Tall Guy. He’s not sure what he can do – shake him? Ask him if he’s okay? – but before he touches him, Tall Guy’s eyes open, and he turns his brown eyes towards him, looking utterly baffled.

“Who the hell are you?” Tall Guy asks, slightly suspiciously.

“I’m…” he fishes around his brain for something, anything. He knows he has a name, but for the life of him it won’t come to him. He swallows drily. “Uh, this will sound stupid. I have no idea who I am.”

Tall Guy pushes himself up on his elbows, still looking suspicious. “How the fuck do you not know your own name?”

Irritation flashes through him, burning in his veins. “Well, what’s yours then?” he challenges, scowling. Tall Guy opens his mouth, and pauses. His ears are starting to flush pink as he sits up, long arms wrapping around his legs. He doesn’t look at him. “Don’t know either?”

“Guess not,” Tall Guy mumbles, frowning thoughtfully. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I have no idea,” he says honestly. “I just woke up here. I don’t remember…” he trails off, and realizes that he doesn’t remember anything. Not his name, where he’s from, or why he’s laying here in the middle of a gravel road with a kind of jerky tall guy who seems familiar in the most distant way.

He must be silent for a moment too long, because Tall Guy prompts, “Well?”

“I don’t remember anything,” he says. “I just think…” he hesitates, looking at Tall Guy. His brown eyes, his suspicious squint. There’s something so familiar about him, like he knows the curve of his jaw and the sound of his laugh, but he has no idea if or how he knows Tall Guy. “I think I know you,” he says finally. “I just don’t know how.”

Tall Guy sighs, and scrubs his hand over his face. “Same here,” he mumbles, and it sounds like the words are coming from him reluctantly. “God, this is so fucking weird.” He scrambles to his feet, and Christ, Tall Guy is _tall._ Limbs seem to keep unfolding, spreading out. He scrambles to his own feet, and feels a flush rise when he realizes how much shorter he is. Tall Guy has at least six inches on him, easy. 

Tall Guy looks around, squinting into the distance. “Don’t see anything,” he says, frowning again. “No buildings, no people. Pretty quiet, too. Don’t even hear birds.” He starts patting his pockets, looking thoughtful.

“What are you doing?”

“Maybe I’ve got a phone or something, and we can call for help,” Tall Guy says vaguely, distracted. Tall Guy sticks his hand in his pocket, face twisted in concentration. He pulls out his hand a moment later, a scrap of wrinkled paper folded in his massive hand. He unfolds it and squints, like he can’t quite see it. “Shane Madej,” he reads, and then purses his lips. “Guess that’s my name?” He looks over, and gestures. “Check your pockets, little guy.”

_Little guy?_ Fuck this dude. Grumbling, he sticks his hand in his jean pockets, fingers grasping. He finds his own slip of paper, folded up and stuffed in his left pocket, and withdraws it. Written on it in the least distinctive handwriting possible are the words _Ryan Bergara._ “I guess I’m Ryan,” he says, crumpling the paper in his hand, trying to ignore how goddamn damp his palms are. “Ryan Bergara.”

Shane grins. “Bond. James Bond,” he says, nonsensically, and then frowns, forehead creasing as his eyebrows draw together. “Who the fuck is James Bond,” he mutters to himself, and then glances at Ryan, still with that perturbed look on his face. Ryan thinks it doesn’t look right on him, and he can’t quite explain why. Maybe it’s just because Shane has an unusual face, and frowns look somewhat bizarre on him, distorting his features. Or maybe Ryan is imagining something deeper there, based off the weird, familiar feeling Shane gives him. Like he knows him better than anyone, including himself at the moment.

“Well, at least we have something to call each other,” Ryan says, trying to sound optimistic but failing miserably. The tension in his stomach is curling around his spine, grasping at his lungs. Finding his name helped a little – it centers him, gives him an identity, makes him more than just a nameless ghost wandering the earth – but it did fuck-all to clarify what the hell is happening, or why Ryan needed a piece of paper to remember his name anyway.

Shane must see something of that burning anxiety on his face, because he takes a step towards Ryan, putting his hand on his elbow. “Ryan,” Shane says, voice low, “Don’t flip out. Breathe with me.” His hand is warm, and Ryan’s own jacket must be thinner than he thought, because he can feel the heat of Shane’s palm burning through the fabric. It’s admittingly soothing, and helps Ryan heave in a shuddering breath. Shane is murmuring “Inhale….and exhale….inhale…” like he’s done this for Ryan a thousand times before. He might have – how is Ryan to know?

Ryan inhales a ragged breath, and Shane smiles comfortingly at him. “I know this place is fucking weird, dude, but you’re not alone here,” he says gently, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jean jacket.

And Ryan knows, in his bones, one truth. He knows nothing about Shane, and nothing about himself – but he knows Shane has his back. Shane’ll make sure everything is okay.

“Oh, there’s another piece of paper in here,” Shane says, sounding surprised. He pulls out a piece of paper that looks like it was ripped out of a notebook. His eyebrows furrow again as he reads it.

“What’s it say?” Ryan asks.

Shane hands him the scrap of tattered paper, looking contemplative. Ryan unfolds it to see more of that same weirdly unremarkable handwriting that was on the note with his name.

_Two enter all alone, one gets out_

_Find the door glowing white_

_To the outside, it’s the only route_

_Back to your November night_

“That’s a bad poem,” Ryan says, turning the paper scrap over in case something is written on the back. “I could’ve done better in grade school.”

“At least they tried to stick to a rhyming scheme,” Shane says absently, looking into the distance. “Bit better than most kids could manage.”

“So we’re looking for a door, then?” Ryan asks, glancing up at Shane. Fuck, this dude is so tall. Ryan isn’t sure if he’s short or if Shane is really just that tall. Without other people around, or even trees, it’s hard to get a sense of scale, but Shane towers over him, even slouched over.

“Guess so,” Shane says, still looking towards where the road curves over the horizon. “Well, we should get walking. I don’t see any places a door could hide around here.” He starts to amble off, and Ryan suddenly wonders what the hell he’s getting into.

“You seem a little too calm about this,” he accuses, hustling to keep up with Shane. The guy’s stride is so long that Ryan has to powerwalk to stay by his side. Shane’s just walking, staring straight ahead, hands shoved into the pockets of his jean jacket.

“Would you rather that I flip out and scream?” Shane asks drily, not looking at him. “I doubt that’ll help anything.”

“It would make me feel a little less like I was the only one who was losing my mind,” Ryan mutters irritably.

Shane huffs, just a bit shy of laughing. “I don’t think I’m the type of guy to get too wound up,” he admits, amusement clear in his tone. The corner of his lip quirks up. “I don’t know. Like, we know what to do – we have to find a glowing door. We go through it, we go home. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”

“The weird, mystical atmosphere with bad poems appearing in your pocket and our being unable to remember jack shit isn’t freaking you out?” Ryan presses disbelievingly.

Shane shrugs. “I don’t know, man. There’s nothing I can do about what’s going on, besides press forward. Panicking is only going to make that harder.” He grins at Ryan. “Besides, I’m not sure this isn’t some weird delusion or dream or something. We could wake up soon – or at least I do – and it turns out you’re a figment of my imagination.”

“Now that’s rude. I’m too hilarious to be imaginary.”

Shane just laughs, his eyes crinkling.

_…_

“I think I have a cat,” Shane says abruptly. They’ve been walking for a couple of hours at least – Ryan has no idea how to judge time from the sun’s position, but it’s definitely lower than it was a few hours ago. Shane’s eyebrows are drawn together again, but his mouth is soft, thoughtful. “Obi. I don’t know what he looks like, but I’m pretty sure I have a cat waiting for me at home.”

“Really? I think I’m allergic to cats.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Shane asks, incredulous.

Ryan laughs. “Just a bone deep feeling, my man. Maybe your Obi tried to off me with his stupid cat fur. Even in this fucked-up place, I can feel the trauma.”

“I can’t remember fucking shit about Obi, but he’s a gentleman. Or a lady. I’m not sure.” Shane’s eyes are glittering with laughter, lips quirked up at the side. “He’s my cat, of course he’d be a gentlecat.”

“Why on earth would that make sense? You’re a fucking nuisance. Bet you got chased off lawns by old men waving canes when you were a kid,” Ryan taunts back.

“Excuse you, I was a goddamn delight. The charmer of all the grandmas. I got so many inedible hard candies, you don’t even know.”

“Wish I could meet that Shane,” Ryan sighs dramatically, pressing the back of his hand into his forehead. “I just get the version that’s a sassy shit and won’t even entertain the theory that we’re dead.”

Shane barks out a laugh. “This is the first time I’m hearing this theory, dude. Can’t entertain it if I don’t hear it.”

“Well, it totally makes sense, doesn’t it?” Ryan asks. “We wake up in a place we don’t recognize, with none of our possessions or memories. I don’t know about you, but we’ve been walking for hours and I still don’t feel hungry or thirsty.”

Shane, mouth open to respond, considers this, and shuts his mouth. Ryan can hear his teeth click against each other. “Touché,” Shane says finally. “I don’t know, though. Feel like we should remember dying or something.”

“You can’t even remember if you have a boy cat or a girl cat, why would we remember dying? Too traumatic for our brains, I reckon.”

“How did we die together, then?” Shane asks, sounding more interested than perturbed. Ryan can see why he gets that relaxed feeling around Shane – Ryan knows he’s highstrung; his fingernails are chewed on, and he jumps at almost every small noise, every brief breeze. Shane doesn’t seem phased by anything – even by the idea of them having died. They’re pretty young, so if they did die, there’s almost no way it was natural, particularly if they were together.

Ryan’s heart lurches at that thought – morbid, sure, but whatever happened to them, it happened to the both of them. This situation is fucked, but Shane is keeping him from screaming.

“Car crash?” Ryan offers weakly, after slightly too much silence. Shane hums, considering. “Or maybe a serial killer. No idea how they’d reach anything vital on you, though, you string bean.” For some insane reason, this makes Shane burst out laughing.

“I see those jacked arms you have are just for decoration, if they didn’t help you fend off a serial killer,” Shane says, giggling maniacally.

Ryan laughs, and flexes his biceps, grinning up at Shane. “You’re just jealous because you’re a sentient noodle of a person,” he jokes, which just makes Shane laugh harder.

…

Night falls, but they keep walking – they don’t feel tired, still are not hungry or thirsty. The sky overhead is lit up with a hundred thousand stars, more than Ryan remembers ever seeing before. There’s a smear of glowing white scraped across the sky, stars clustered around it. The moon is waning, only a quarter full, but it provides enough light for them to see the gravel road, always stretching out over the next gentle hill.

Shane tilts his head back and stares at the stars, making a considering noise in the back of his throat.

“What’s up?” Ryan asks.

“I don’t see any constellations I recognize,” Shane replies, narrowing his eyes at the sky. “Like, you can almost see something like the Big Dipper or Ursa Major, but it’s almost like it’s missing something, or like stars got added. It’s just weird.”

“Fond of the stars, then?”

Shane shrugs, kicking at the gravel. “No idea. The concept of them, maybe. I feel like I like spending time outdoors, though.”

“I don’t know if I do,” Ryan admits. “Not that it’s bad or something, I just feel like something’s going to jump out of the dark and grab me.”

“You seem like a city boy,” Shane says, and from anyone else it would be a little derisive – but it sounds like Shane’s just stating a fact. Shane likes being outside, Ryan’s probably more comfortable with concrete and streetlights. “There’s no trees or anything here, though. No places for the boogiemen to hide. It’s not that creepy.”

“You’re forgetting the part where we’re stuck in a featureless landscape with no memories and creepy pieces of paper just appearing in our pockets with ominous but terrible poems on them,” Ryan reminds him. “I feel like that’s pretty creepy.”

“Nah, seems totally fine and normal to me.”

Ryan wonders how he knows Shane, wonders how close they are, wherever they’re from. Shane doesn’t hesitate to start razzing him, with a familiarity to it like it’s written into his bones, embedded in his DNA. And Ryan looks forward to it, expects it – he thinks, if Shane responded any differently, any more seriously or less jokingly, it would be the most disturbing part of this whole place.

“I’m glad you’re here with me,” Ryan says before he can think through it more so, and immediately flushes red. He’s glad Shane can’t see him too well under the weak silver moonlight; he has the feeling he’s a blotchy blusher. For whatever reason – embarrassment, probably, or the fact that Shane will apparently mock him for everything – he doesn’t want Shane to see that.

He doesn’t look at Shane, but he can feel the weight of Shane considering what to say, turning it over in his head. “I’m glad we’re together here,” Shane says finally, his voice soft and gentle. His fingers graze the edge of Ryan’s arm, reassuring in the starlit dark, and they walk on.

_…_

In the distance, they sometimes see figures that look like the outlines of people – but not quite. The shadows are slightly too tall, and if Ryan squints, he can make out glowing balls of light where their eyes should be. The figures never get too close, and if they try to walk towards them, they seem to fade into the background, so they can never get closer.

Shane laughs when Ryan hesitantly asks him if he thinks they’re dangerous. It’s early morning, the sun only barely over the horizon. The shadows’ starlit eyes are starting to fade in the light of day, but at night, in the distance, they had been brighter than the moon. “They seem more sad than anything else,” Shane says, waving a hand dismissively. “Can’t even handle having these hot specimens of men get close to them.” He winks, and Ryan flushes furiously. He’s learning, quickly, that it’s next to impossible to get Shane to take something seriously.

“You are fucking weird, man,” he grumbles, kicking at the dirt road as they meander on.

“It’s my repressed midwestern charm,” Shane says drily. “My true feelings are buried under a layer of cheese and corn.” He pauses, blinks. “Oh. Huh. I’m from Illinois.” He looks around the endless green-gold field they’re walking through, and huffs out a laugh. “Maybe that’s why I’m not flipping out; this place just feels like home.”

”Well, I don’t think I’m from Illinois,” Ryan says. “I feel like I need…the ocean or something.” He gasps in dramatically, so suddenly that Shane jumps a little. “Holy shit, do you think I surf?!”

“I have no idea,” Shane replies, giggling. “You’re the right level of bro for that.”

“What the fuck does that mean, Madej?”

“I mean,” Shane gestures at him without breaking stride, “I could totally see you in a bro tank, chugging a beer in Florida on spring break. You probably work out all day and say ‘no homo’ if you touch your dude friends’ hands.”

“Wow, makes me sound like a jerk,” Ryan says, a little hurt. Shane seems to pick up on it, because he gently touches the side of Ryan’s arm – for a moment, Ryan wants to jerk it away like a child, but he’s aware that would be immature. Besides, Shane has the warmest hands, and it’s immensely reassuring.

“I think you’re more like the liven-up-the-party type of bro,” Shane says kindly. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. You seem more…outgoing than I do.”

Ryan glances up at him, at Shane’s hard-to-read face, where his apology and his contrition are currently obvious in a way where Shane’s feelings often aren’t. “You seem pretty outgoing to me,” he huffs.

Shane shrugs lopsidedly, one shoulder going higher than the other. “Nah, I think I’m pretty awkward. I have a lot of memories of saying something and then immediately thinking it’s a bad idea.” He smiles, a little self-deprecatingly. “See: previous comments calling you a bro.”

“I don’t think you’re that awkward,” Ryan says. “Also, I never thought you cared that much about how you come off. You’ve always been weird.”

Because Shane is weird. Ryan doesn’t know how, but he knows that Shane is weird – he likes bands no one else has heard of, writes stupid songs and comics, cracks morbid jokes, laughs at catastrophic bad luck, and will try to find a “reasonable” explanation for anything, if for nothing other than to be annoying. Other people’s judgment has never seemed to stop Shane in a way it would Ryan.

“On one hand, I don’t,” Shane agrees, shoving his hands in his pockets. “But like, I care about what people who I care about think of me. Can’t be immune to everyone’s opinions.”

“Seems like you are, though.”

“Maybe I just have a great poker face. I should go to Vegas and take them for all they’re worth,” Shane says, and then winces. “Wait, no, fuck – I just remembered I’m shit at card games. Scrap that plan, never mind.”

The odd tension fades a little as Ryan laughs at Shane’s disgruntled expression. “Sorry to pop your dreams of easy riches, big guy.” Shane blows a raspberry like the five-year-old he is on the inside, and Ryan laughs a little harder.

…

“How do you think we know each other?” Ryan asks. The sun is low in the sky, the clouds orange and gold overheard, fading to the softest indigo. “Wherever we came from. Think we’re friends?”

“Oh, yeah,” Shane says easily. “For sure we are.”

“How do you know?”

“I feel like I’ve known you forever,” Shane says simply. “Also, I have the feeling we travel together a lot.” He pauses, looking out into the distance. There’s a shadow standing twenty feet to the left of the gravel road about a quarter mile ahead, getting fainter and fainter the closer they get. “I think we were in Indiana, before we were here.”

Ryan shudders involuntarily. When they remember things, it isn’t like it flashes into their heads – more like the information reveals itself, like it was there all along, just hidden under the folds. “In a creepy 1920s house with a bunch of really ominous graffiti on the walls? And for some reason we decided to spend a night camping out in it?”

Shane nods. “Yeah, the one in Gary, where the mom claimed clear oil was leaking out of the walls and her kids were possessed by demons.” He shakes his head, laughing. “Just nonsense.”

“How the hell can you say that when we’re here?” Ryan demands, gesturing at the landscape around them, the eerie, empty, endless nature of it. “ _Something_ is in that house, if it put us here. We’re in a creepy void of a place, and the last place we remember being was a house everyone thinks is haunted.”

“But this place really isn’t that bad,” Shane points out. “Nothing’s trying to hurt us or preventing us from trying to find our way out. Hell, it was nice enough to tell us how to get out. We’re not dying of thirst or exhaustion. It really could be worse.”

“But you admit there’s something fucking weird about the house,” Ryan presses insistently.

“Sure, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here,” Shane says, sounding reasonable enough. “I just don’t think it’s demons. In stories, they’d, like, torture us and eat off our flesh or something. We’re just walking in a field. The mom was saying that her kid was walking backwards up the stairs or something, and we’re sure as hell not doing that.”

“We don’t know that – maybe we left our bodies on the floor of the house and a demon’s possessing them right now,” Ryan argues, and feels himself burn as Shane just laughs. “What’s so funny, asshole?”

“I’m just trying to picture a demon trying to steer my body around while being intimidating at all,” Shane giggles, pressing his hand flat over his face. His smile is wide, eyes shut from laughing. “Dude, I had to duck under every single doorframe in that place – you can’t look intimidating doing that when you’re built like me, it just looks silly.”

Involuntarily, Ryan pictures it – Shane’s eyes, overcome by black because he’s definitely been influenced by movies, trying to awkwardly get around that stupid house with its low ceilings, whacking its head into the doorframe, and immediately joins Shane in laughing. “God, getting popped into your body would be like adding stilts to a normal person,” he snorts, “They’d have no idea how to steer.”

“That’s what I’m telling you! We’re safe from demon possession because the demon would immediately realize that getting into my body would be a mistake!” Shane is full-on laughing, shoulders shaking with the force of, and it’s so infectious that Ryan can’t stop himself from joining in, feeling lighter than the situation warrants.

…

“I remember who James Bond is,” Ryan says as twilight gathers, heavy and pink and purple. The field is cast in shades of soft indigo.

“Yeah?” Shane asks.

“Yeah. Spy from a movie franchise.” Ryan mimes finger guns, and Shane laughs. “Martini, stirred, not shaken.” He drops his voice, tries to put on a British accent, but it must be horrible, because Shane just laughs harder. “I don’t think you like them much though.”

“Nah,” Shane agrees, wiping at his eyes. “I’m more of a Mission Impossible kind of man. Tom Cruise for life, baby!” He spreads his arms wide and shouts the last part to the darkening sky.

“Even though he’s a bit of a whackjob?”

“Aren’t we all, though,” Shane says.

“Dude. Tom Cruise is on another level.”

“Yeah, of being insanely cool,” Shane argues, grinning like the lunatic Ryan suspects he is. “You’ve seen those death-defying stunts. Hanging from a plane as it takes off? Madness.”

“You want to be like Ethan Hunt, then?”

“Nah,” Shane says. “I’m too chill. Also, that probably takes so much stamina. Ugh.” He shudders, exaggerated, arms flopping like he can’t control them. It makes Ryan laugh, along with the mental image of Shane climbing up a building like the awkward beanpole he is.

“I can’t wait to get back and watch a movie again,” Ryan says, kicking at the road. “Even a horror movie would be better than this stupid field.”

“Even the fact that the last thing we remember is falling asleep in a demon-possessed house?” Shane asks, deceptively innocent.

“Fuck, why did you remind me,” Ryan says with feeling, and Shane laughs.

…

Ryan doesn’t know how many days pass, but they spend what feels like weeks walking along the gravel road, chatting. They re-remember that they work together, that they go into supposedly haunted places for their jobs (“How the hell did you manage to talk me into that as a career choice, Ryan?”), that they have lives, existences, beings outside of this stupid, endless field.

As the sun comes up one morning, he notices a shack in the far distance – the first thing besides shadows and field and road they’ve seen in this void. From far away, he can tell it’s in bad shape – the paint is so faded that it’s just gray, peeling off in long chunks. Large holes are evident in its roof, and the windows are cracked and shuttered.

He can tell when Shane sees it, because he immediately tenses, his face going flat and a little bloodless. It’s a weird reaction, but Shane is a weird guy.

“God, I hope this place has that stupid door,” Ryan says, his throat a little hoarse, catching on the words.

Shane is silent for a long moment, before saying, “Me too.” He doesn’t add anything, which is unlike him – Shane has a stupid joke, a witty crack, for almost anything. Ryan has to suppress a shiver, suddenly feeling the weight of this place in a way he hadn’t previously – the empty landscape, the shadows.

They walk towards the building, Shane’s face getting more and more grim the closer they get. Up close, the shack smells of decay – molding wood, cracked paint, abandonment and despair. The windows are covered with boards, the glass cracked. The worn door is firmly shut, though – enough so that Ryan and Shane both have to tug on the handle simultaneously to open it.

Inside, on the far side of the shack, is a thin door, glowing brightly. The light shining out of it isn’t quite white – it’s like every color, mashed together, or maybe the absence of all of them. It’s kind of giving Ryan a headache to look at. He can’t make out anything within the door; just that blank emptiness.

“We found it,” Ryan breathes, and is suddenly overcome with the thought that they’ll be back soon – back in their world, where they have all of their memories, and people, and constellations without stars added or missing.

Shane glances at the doorway, overflowing with light that’s not quite white. He looks conflicted as he swallows. “You go first,” he says, voice tense. There’s something in it that Ryan can’t identify.

“What? Are you really scared of this, man? This entire weird fucking situation, and this _door_ is what gets to you?” Ryan asks, absolutely baffled. He can’t fully comprehend the look on Shane’s face, the set of his jaw. He so rarely sees Shane scared that he isn’t sure if he could pinpoint what Shane looks like when he’s freaked out.

Shane just stares at him. There’s something behind his eyes that Ryan can’t read. The light from the door casts long shadows across his face, making him both older and younger, highlighting some wrinkles and smoothening out others. “Don’t punch me,” he says, and Ryan is about to ask him what the fuck Shane’s going on about when Shane leans down and presses a kiss to his mouth. The pressure is very light, and Shane’s lips are dry. He needs lip balm, or something. He pulls away a moment later, looking at Ryan’s face like he’s worried he’ll never see it again, and bites his lip. “And don’t hate me.”

Ryan’s brain isn’t working. It’s white noise, static like what’s on TV, flickers from the start of the universe. Remnants of the big bang. “Shane, what-“

Shane shoves him, hard enough that Ryan stumbles back, and trips on a loose floorboard. He falls backwards, hand reaching out for Shane as he tumbles through the door. Shane watches him fall, his mouth firm, eyes wet, and then a force hits Ryan in the chest, and everything blacks out.

…

Ryan bolts upright, chest heaving. His lungs burn, and his throat feels closed, like he swallowed ten cotton balls and a handful of cinnamon for good measure. His mind is so overrun with thoughts of _Shane Shane what the fuck Shane_ that there’s hardly the room to remind himself that breathing is, in fact, a necessity. The room of the Portal to Hell house is dark, the corners of it only lit dimly silver by the waning moon. It’s so dark he can hardly see the graffiti that so unnerved him earlier.

He whips around, legs tangled in his sleeping bag. Shane is lying behind him, like he was on the gravel road, flat on his bag. The sleeping bag is kicked down around his knees, even though it’s late November in Indiana and not exactly warm. His face is pale, almost ethereal in the weak moonlight, but Ryan can see the faint sheen of sweat along his brow, the tightness in his jaw. His eyes are moving frantically under his eyelids, but they make no moves towards opening.

“Shane,” Ryan gasps. It sounds torn from him, his voice ragged, somewhat too high and cracking on the end of Shane’s name. He scrambles over, one hand reaching to cup Shane’s cheek, another one going to grasp his upper arm. “Shane, wake up. Get through the door, you fucker, you were right behind me!”

Shane doesn’t respond. His breathing is starting to sound a little strained, and his eyebrows are pinching together. Ryan swallows hard, gearing himself up, and slaps Shane full across the face, heart pounding. “Shane, you jackass –“

But it doesn’t do anything. Shane just lays there, unresponsive, the side of his cheek turning red where Ryan slapped him. Ryan feels the hot burn of tears behind his eyes. His hands are shaking as he grabs the front of Shane’s shirt. He thinks he’s moving to shake him, try to wake him up – instead, he presses his palms flat to Shane’s chest, right over his heart. Shane’s heart is beating, sure, but it feels fluttery, erratic, like it’s not sure it wants to keep going.

Hands shaking, Ryan snatches his phone and selects TJ’s cell number. TJ doesn’t pick up the first time and Ryan swears as it goes to voicemail, pressing TJ’s contact icon again. He can’t bring himself to look at Shane, and his vision is too blurry to see straight.

TJ finally picks up on the fourth ring. _“Ryan, it’s three in the goddamn morning, can’t Shane-“_

“Shane’s not waking up,” Ryan interrupts, voice so rough he’d be surprised if TJ heard a word. “TJ, man, I need help. Shane won’t wake up and he looks terrible and his heart is beating erratically-“

TJ seems to pick up on the stress and panic, and immediately shifts into Responsible Adult Mode. _“Keep trying to wake him. I’ll call an ambulance. Did he eat or drink something he’s allergic to or could be poisonous? Are you feeling okay? Do you feel weak or dizzy?”_

“No, fuck, nothing that I didn’t, and I’m fucking fine, Shane’s the one having problems,” Ryan says, curling inwards as panic sets into his bones. “TJ, you gotta make them hurry, he’s breathing weird-“

_“Breathe, Ryan,”_ TJ says, _“We’ll be right there_. _Keep an eye on Shane._ ” He hangs up, leaving Ryan alone, hyperventilating in the dark. The phone slips out of his hand, and he feels his fingers curl into the fabric of Shane’s shirt again.

Steeling himself, he chances a glance down. Shane’s face is getting increasingly bloodless – or maybe the light is just so bad that Ryan can’t make out the difference in his coloring. His breathing is getting raspier, and Ryan’s afraid of what could be happening to his heart beat.

“Shane,” he says desperately, “Don’t die, you fucking jackass. You still have some explaining to do.” He pushes his hand flat against Shane’s sternum, enough to feel his ragged breathing, far away enough that he can’t feel his heart, getting weaker. “Kissing me and pushing me through the goddamn door – what is your fucking problem?”

Shane doesn’t answer, and Ryan bends over, curling up, pressing his forehead to Shane’s chest, trying to channel Shane from the road, when he barely remembered him, reminding Ryan to breathe. “If you die here, jackass, I’ll never forgive you,” he croaks out, tears spilling down his face.

He doesn’t move until red and blue lights fill the room, and then the paramedics are whisking Shane away. Sitting on the floor in a daze, a blanket a paramedic tossed at him around his shoulders, Ryan watches them go, fitting an oxygen mask around Shane’s head as he lays limply on a stretcher. He doesn’t move, even as TJ, Mark and Devon shove through the crowd, and push past the cop trying to get Ryan to respond. Devon pulls him into a hug, telling him Shane’s fine, Shane’ll be okay.

Ryan isn’t sure if he believes her.


	2. been up and down this road

“There’s no good reason why he isn’t waking up, apparently,” TJ said. His bushy beard hides a lot of his face, but Ryan can see how tense he is from the quivering of his jaw, the furrow between his eyebrows. “They have no idea where the heart and breathing issues came from, either. Shane isn’t allergic to anything, is he?”

Ryan shakes his head numbly, hunched over in the plastic chair in the waiting room. It’s just past seven in the morning, but there’s no windows, so time feels meaningless, slightly pointless. They had hustled Shane out of the house in his pajama shirt and pants, leaving his change of clothes behind, and Ryan found himself grabbing Shane’s red flannel with shaking hands, like a child in need of comfort in the face of a nightmare. He’s clutching it to his chest, trying to ignore the way it smells like Shane, and unable to deny how much it comforts him at the same time.

“Could there be carbon monoxide in the house or something?” Mark suggests from his seat besides Ryan.

“Why would it have affected Shane but not Ryan, then?” Devon asks. “Besides the obvious, Ryan’s fine, physically.”

TJ shrugs helplessly. “I have no goddamn idea, guys,” he admits, scrubbing at his eyes with his palm. He’s got heavy purple bags forming under them, aging him by five years. “The doctors said it’s like Shane’s just giving up. There’s no clear reason as to why; stuff’s just shutting down.”

“Is that medically possible?” Mark asks, sounding morbidly interested, and Devon hits him on the arm, jerking her head towards Ryan in silent admonishment.

“Well, we’ll have to deal with it,” TJ sighs, rubbing at his face. “I’ve already called Buzzfeed’s legal team in case they determine it had something to do with the house. The doctors say we should probably try to call Shane’s parents – Schaumburg’s only like an hour away and they should probably be here.”

They keep talking, but Ryan tunes them out, thinking about the emptiness of that field they were trapped in, the endless walking through countless days. How they had to rediscover components of themselves as they went, unearthed from deep within them. Shane’s always been a fairly reserved and reticent guy, quick with a joke but guarded with his innermost life, and Ryan’s a little uncomfortable with the fact that he feels like he learned more about Shane walking through some weird level of hell than he ever could in their reality.

He thinks about Shane, alone in that void of a space, where there was hardly even a breeze, where the air always smelled of smoke, and nothing ever seemed to change – where even the stars weren’t quite right.

Involuntarily, his fingers tighten in the folds of Shane’s flannel. He knows what he has to do.

…

Ryan stares at the white exterior of the Portal to Hell house, the taped up windows and the falling shingles, somehow visible in the waning moonlight. He’s shivering – as much due to fear as to the cold November air, with frost glittering on the grass and along the cracked windowpanes.

He’s glad it was Mark they left in charge of making sure he didn’t do anything stupid, rather than Devon or TJ – they were still at the hospital, trying to figure out what to do about Shane, trying to contact his family. TJ, at the very least, will do his best to get through anything before falling over from exhaustion, and would likely notice Ryan trying to leave. Mark looked wrung out and had passed out at 10.30, which left Ryan with plenty of time to slip away and grab a Lyft across town. Now, it’s just before midnight, and Ryan is standing in front of a house that he has paranormal fuckery going on with it, and he’s going to plunge into it alone, fully aware of that risk.

The front door is still unlocked from this morning, from the paramedics rushing in to hustle Shane out and to the hospital. Ryan valiantly tries to not think of Shane’s ragged breathing in the dark or the stuttering of his heart as he gently pushes the door open and slips inside to the graffiti-covered front hall.

He settles down onto the wooden floor of the Portal to Hell house, clutching Shane’s red flannel to his chest, and determinedly shuts his eyes. He’s not sure if this’ll work – he’s pretty sure it won’t, actually, and he and Shane will just wander around purgatory until the end of time together – but he’d rather that than Shane sleeping, unable to wake up. If that’s the other option, then there’s really no choice at all.

It takes hours, and Ryan has to down a couple of sleeping pills, but he can finally feel sleep tugging at him. He hugs the flannel tighter, and lets himself fall.

…  
  


When he wakes up, he’s on the dirt road again, the sun overhead, the faint wildfire scent lingering in the air. He glances down. In his hands, he’s clutching Shane’s flannel.

He remembers everything – his name, Shane, what Shane did. He’s not sure why – maybe it’s because this is the second time he’s been here, so he knows the rules. Maybe it’s because Shane is stuck here, and Ryan has to get him out. Ryan, for once, doesn’t want to overthink it. He just starts sprinting down the road.

They must have walked for miles, when they were wandering together. Ryan remembers he doesn’t have to eat here, doesn’t need water, doesn’t need sleep – so he pushes himself to go, to keep running. He’ll go until he finds Shane, until he can take his hand and drag him through the door together.

He runs and runs and runs. The sky fades to dark, and the moon rises – and he still runs. Runs as the sun comes up again, and again, and again.

In the distance, he can see one of the shadows – the elongated ones, with the miniature sun eyes. It’s standing outside the shack where he and Shane found the door, about fifteen feet away. But unlike the other shadows, this one stays there as Ryan runs towards it, getting bigger and hazier the closer he gets.

As he gets closer, he can see a human form embraced within the shadow – someone tall, and gangly, who is all elbows and awkward joints. Shane’s standing in the depths of the shadow growing out of him, head slumps forward, unmoving. The shadow seeps out of him, so dense that it obscures his legs entirely. It almost looks more solid than he does – the absence of light, more real than flesh and blood. His hands look translucent, like he’s fading away.

“SHANE!” Ryan yells, as he runs closer and closer. “SHANE!”

Shane doesn’t move, and the shadow tilts its head slightly, eyes shimmering. For a moment, they’re almost the same brown as Shane’s, lit up from within. Ryan’s heart is pounding, and he’s not sure if it’s because he just ran dozens of miles to get to this moment, or because he’s not sure if Shane’s here at all anymore. Maybe just his body is – and Ryan already had that, back in the hospital room in Indiana. He came here to get the rest of him, to slot Shane back into place.

He slows as he gets closer, until he’s right in front of Shane, shadows lapping at his feet. The shadow spill off of Shane thoughtlessly, and the glowing eyes are watching him impassively. From this close, Ryan can see that Shane’s eyes are half open, staring at the ground. The pupils are gone, the brown of Shane’s eyes eating up the entirety of his irises. His jaw is slightly slack.

“Shane,” Ryan chokes out, reaching out, afraid to touch. His fingers curl in the air in front of Shane’s white shirt. “Buddy, big guy, jackass – I’m here, man. You gotta look at me.”

Shane doesn’t move, and the shadow continues to tower above him, still staring down at Ryan, still as death. Ryan’s heart is sinking, the more he looks at Shane – the vacant stare, the way his body is bleeding into the shadow. It’s like waking up in the Portal to Hell house all over again to find Shane unresponsive, unable to wake up with him.

Without thinking, he pushes himself up on to his tiptoes, pressing the tips of fingers into Shane’s chest for balance, and presses the softest kiss he can manage to Shane’s slack mouth. “Please, you fucking idiot,” Ryan whispers, and kisses him again.

Under his fingertips, he feels Shane’s chest shudder. Hands grasp his wrists, pushing his palms flat, and Shane’s mouth goes from unresponsive to seeking, pressing firmly against Ryan’s.

“You’re the idiot, coming back here,” Shane mumbles, sounding dazed, and when Ryan opens his eyes, he can see Shane staring at him, his gaze soft. His pupils are back, blown wide, infinitely dark. “What the fuck were you thinking?” he asks, wrapping his arms around Ryan’s waist. He feels real and solid, coming into focus under the high noon sun.

Ryan bursts out laughing, a little hysterically. The shadow above Shane is starting to fade, dissipating like wildfire smoke, the sun eyes collapsing like they’re falling into a black hole. There’s the scent of burning wood again, dry logs going up in flames, stronger than it was when they woke up on the road.

“I don’t think I was,” he admits, pressing all of his weight into Shane. “You just…ugh.” He presses his forehead into Shane’s shoulder, suddenly feeling wrung out and exhausted. “You just wouldn’t wake up, and…” He trails off. There are not really the words to describe what he was thinking, because like he said, he wasn’t. He just moved, just acted, just went. There weren’t any questions or doubts in his mind when he understood what he had to do, although there was fear.

Shane hugs him closer, resting his forehead on the top of Ryan’s head. “I can explain, promise,” he says quietly.

Ryan pushes him back, holding onto the sides of Shane’s arms, and stares up into his face. “Why the fuck did you push me, asshole?” he demands.

Shane sighs. “ _Two enter all alone, one gets out,”_ he quotes, looking frustrated. There’s a flush starting on his ears, along the bridge of his nose. “Right after you went through the door – like immediately – the light faded. It was just a door. I couldn’t follow you, and I figured from the poem that that was what was going to happen.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” Ryan hisses, his grip on Shane’s arms tightening, and Shane winces. Ryan doesn’t let up – he needs answers, needs to know why Shane was willing to keep himself trapped in this void of a landscape.

“If I told you, I don’t think you would have gone through with it,” Shane says quietly.

“Because I wouldn’t, you jackass, we had to get out of here together. We’re the goddamn ghoul boys, ride or die.” Ryan shoves at Shane, gently, too frustrated to not. “You don’t get to make that choice for me.”

Shane seems to be struggling for something to say, so Ryan decides to have a little bit of empathy for him. “What was with the shadow?”

Shane blinks. “What shadow?” he asks, looking perplexed.

“Dude,” Ryan says slowly. “Are you fucking kidding.”

“I have zero idea what you’re talking about.”

The shadow has fully faded by now, but Ryan still waves at the air around them, like it’ll appear to answer his questions. “The shadows! The creepy ones. One of them was surrounding you, dude – it was really fucking creepy and weird!”

“Ah,” Shane says, like he’s starting to understand. “Okay, well, I didn’t know that was the result – but after you, uh, left, I was thinking of what I could possibly do next and I just sort of…” he trails off, looking extremely uncomfortable. Ryan tries to ignore the deeply ingrained guy instinct to whack him in place of talking about feelings.

“What?”

“I just had the strongest sense of despair,” Shane admits quietly, “Like I knew there was no way out and I would just die here.” He shrugs awkwardly. “It froze me in place…and honestly I don’t remember much. Guess that’s where the shadows come from, though.”

That thought makes Ryan deeply uncomfortable – that the shadows he’d been so disturbed by were lost souls, trapped here, without a way out. Turned to shadows, without the people they’d lost coming back for them.

He decides to leave the topic for now. “What about the kiss?”

Shane immediately looks shifty as hell, and somewhat dejected – almost like he did in the moments before he kissed Ryan and shoved him through that door. “A heartfelt goodbye?” he offers, looking like he knows Ryan won’t buy it.

Ryan just stares at him judgmentally. Shane heaves a sigh that seems to come from a dark place inside of him, pained and miserable, and leans his head back to stare at the darkening sky. “Fuck, Ryan, I hate talking like this.” He sounds pained, like the words are being torn from him and he would rather they not. “I love you, you fucking asshole, and if only one of us could get out of here, it was going to be you. Happy now?”

For the first time in a while, Ryan feels a grin spreading across his face. “Extremely.” He rises onto his tiptoes as one hand reaches behind Shane’s head, pulling it forward and down so he can kiss Shane again – heartfelt, without stupid self-sacrifice as a motivator. Shane seems too shocked to move for a moment, but then his arms wrap around Ryan so tightly that he squeezes all the air out of him, and he’s kissing back.

He’s kissing back, and for a moment, Ryan can forget how fucked-up the situation had to get to get them to this point, because he hardly has the room to feel anything but overwhelming joy that he gets to have this, with this man.

It’s fading to darkness with those not-right constellations visible overhead by the time Ryan gathers the presence of mind to pull back, feeling like his insides have been turned to champagne – he’s just that happy. Shane’s looking a little dazed, like all of his dreams have come true in front of them, and he was given a puppy besides.

“We’re going home together,” Ryan says, grabbing Shane’s hand and dragging him towards the shack. “I love you too much to leave you here alone.”

“But the door only works for one pass-through,” Shane tries to protest, tailing Ryan obediently. Through the still-open front door, they can see the portal lit up with that bizarre white, glowing in the darkness of the evening. “Dude, don’t – I’ll stay – “

“No you fucking won’t,” Ryan interrupts. “We do this together or not at all.” He pauses just outside at the door, grinning at Shane in a way that must, frankly, be a little manic.

Luckily, Shane is a real weirdo, because he’s smiling back. “Together then,” he says, and holding hands, they step into the light together.

…

Ryan wakes up, alone on the floor of the Portal to Hell House, still holding Shane’s flannel. His phone is buzzing insistently, screen lit up with a picture of TJ flashing the peace sign at the camera. Dazed, Ryan swipes “accept” on the call. “TJ?”

_“Ryan, where the fuck are you? Shane just woke up and the doctors say he’s fine. Fully recovered. Medical miracle and all that jazz. Get your ass over here; he’s asking for you.”_

Ryan isn’t sure what kind of noise he makes, except that it’s affirmative enough that TJ just hangs up without saying anything more. Ryan pulls his phone back to check the time – just past 3AM.

He lets out a wet laugh and scrubs roughly at his face, holding Shane’s flannel to his chest, over his pounding heart.

…

“They think it might have been carbon monoxide poisoning,” Shane says when Ryan steps into his hospital room, gently shutting the door behind him. Shane looks amused, lips quirked up lopsidedly, and he’s propped up in a hospital bed. There’s wires trailing into his shirt, clearly monitoring his heart beat, and an IV stuck in his arm. He’d had an oxygen mask on when Ryan had seem him earlier in the day, but that’s gone now.

Ryan is so ecstatic that he could cry, but he does his best to not. He’s probably not that successful. “Yeah?” he asks, voice cracking, back pressed up against the door. “How’d they settle on that?”

Shane shrugs, still smiling. “I think it was just too baffling and their brains went with the easy answer,” he says dryly. “Anyway, I didn’t try to correct them. Hard to explain the whole ‘my mind got stuck in another world and then despair was going to turn me into a shadow creature and this made my body shut down.’”

Ryan feels the irrational urge to laugh. Shane’s always had the deeply morbid ability to make any situation sound both irrationally bizarre and yet hypernormal. “Yeah, that…that might not go over well.”

They stare at each other silently, and then Shane reaches out with his arm without the IV stuck in it. “Come here, you weepy bastard; you look like you’re about to cry.”

Ryan laughs wetly and stumbles forward, tangling his fingers together with Shane’s. Shane tugs him over to the bed, and Ryan awkwardly perches on the side of it, trying not to show how bone-weary he is.

“You can lay down – I know it’s not that big, but I don’t mind being close to you,” Shane says softly. Then, like he realizes that might be a weird statement unless he plays up how weird it is, he winks, just a moment too late for it to fit. Ryan chuckles and leans into his side, scrubbing at his face.

“I was so scared I’d never see you again,” he mumbles, leaning his head on Shane’s bony shoulder. Shane, in the tradition of many an awkward man being faced with genuine feelings and empathy, weakly pats at Ryan’s shoulder in a sort of _yeah-buddy_ way before he wraps his arm around him.

“Kind of sucked, not going to lie,” he mutters, pressing his nose into the side of Ryan’s head. “But we’re here now.” He kisses Ryan’s temple. “Go to sleep, you loser, I know you’re running on fumes.”

Ryan hums, already halfway asleep.

They doze until Shane’s mom opens the door at 8AM, flips on the lights, and immediately lets out a cry of “SHANE! You’ve been dating your lovely friend this whole time?! Why didn’t you tell me?!”

The hospital room fills with too much noise for Ryan’s exhausted brain to process, so he turns his face to hide it in Shane’s neck. Shane’s arms are wrapped around him as he tries to calm down his babbling mother, and even though it’s loud and chaotic, Ryan feels at peace.

…

Sometimes, Ryan sees the shadow people, standing just out of sight – in the shade of trees, in the shadows cast by buildings, their eyes burning up like the sun. They’re never looking at him – they’re always following Shane, like they know he should be one of them, that he managed to escape. Like they want him to come back.

Shane never comments on them, but he also never protests when Ryan tangles their fingers together and tugs Shane a little closer as they walk on, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! Please let me know if I dropped some obvious plot point; I wrote like a quarter of this while slightly drunk.

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, I have no idea what Shane and Ryan are like as people, but I'm fairly highstrung and easily spooked, so Ryan feels more familiar to me. I know a couple of guys who are six four, and watching them get drunk and smack into doorframes sometimes is honestly hysterical.
> 
> Title comes from Twenty One Pilots' Level of Concern: https://youtu.be/dU9QkIBWxqU


End file.
